Significant Breaths
A flannel button-up and house shoes wear a man / Sitting to my left, with a right ear just trying to keep up appearances; / Just as deaf to the / echo of firework safety / Then, / As to my voice / Now.
Off the Shelf
Off the Shelf is our section for creative works by medical students.
Contributing Writer
University of Kansas School of Medicine
Class of 2017 medical student at the University of Kansas School of Medicine.
Death with Dignity
Whenever someone hang glides, / They pick a place to land. / Somewhere soft and somewhere close, / Somewhere that they planned.
The Entirety of Man
My thumb is on the white plunger: first stop / and now the pipette is ready to suck. / My hand is trembling, hovering over / the small plastic tube. I dip it down and in, / release the plunger, and draw it all inside.
Mine
You claim that my choice breaks your heart, / as if mine isn’t shattered and cracked. / You think I don’t know how beautiful he’d be, /or wonder how he’d walk, talk and act.
Quemaduras
Closing his eyes, he reaches out his hand and feels. He feels the texture, the rise and fall of the terrain, lines criss-crossing at various angles and various thickness. It is like bark, he thinks, of a small tree. The surface has no discernible pattern. It is not smooth yet the undulations are certainly not bumps; they are more like ridges. He wonders at its softness, its warmth, and he passes his fingers over it until his palm comes into contact as well, his whole hand now feeling, touching.
Life Hue (2013)
In this piece I hoped to portray that while physicians are healers who often hold life in their hands, in many ways, it is the patients who give life to the physicians. Each patient we see is a unique hue or brushstroke in our medical training and careers, adding color and texture which transforms an otherwise monochromatic existence into a full spectrum of experiences.
M/R/G
Stunted by the shadow of its flow / pouring, rumbling in a lifelong swing / through the raging heart of darkness rings / the steadfast drip: a weak and lonely bruit, / and pitting insult in the turbid skin / with shocking faults to grimly thinning walls / the fallen house still stands; the flagging strands / and edematous sands chafe the burning soles.
Burnout
Burnout / They say dreamers aren’t doctors / So they kill the dream / Tests with trivial details we have barely seen, / let alone remember.
Powerless
“He is beyond the help of human aid” / He quoted from the big book / He stared directly at me as he spoke / And that one line was all it took
Anatomical Variation
A poem about gross anatomy from our writer-in-training Damien Zreibe.
An Afternoon with a Swazi Boy
A poem from our writer-in-training Brent Schnipke about his experience abroad.
Autopsy of a Child
A poetic reflection on shadowing in the medical examiner’s office.
Contributing Writer Emeritus
University of Louisville School of Medicine
Erin is a Class of 2016 medical student. She has a B.A. in English. She took a year off before medical school to work as a Emergency Medicine scribe, and to learn how to make cupcakes from scratch. She enjoys discovering the story-telling inherent in every patient encounter.